This morning, I rise from the van and see a towering wave coming in, all for myself! On the dot I run up the pedestal rock (of which, again, the buoy has been blown off) and encourage the incoming water with a broad, sweeping gesture, like a rock star does to his fans. At that same moment, two seagulls shoot up in the storm.
That is some awakening!
Touched, I let my eyes wash up. The swell begins as a frown that gets deeper and darker. Then it climbs and becomes light. The hastening top is blown to glass, from bottle green to heavenly blue, and the Offshore tears off the lacy rim. Right before the topple I can just, and then just not anymore catch a glimpse from under it. An erotease like Marilyn Monroe on a hot air grid. To me, as a man.
A girl could imagine the waves rushing towards her like it used to be at dance classes: 'Gentlemen, invite a lady, if you please'.
And when a wave has thrown itself to froth, the bubbles in happy ensembles prance on as if school has just gone out. Sometimes thereafter comes a big brother that sucks them up to spume scribe on its uprear. But all this water has its own break.
As the rocks run into the sea in terraces the edges have to face the fiercest. And that shows as a vanguard of battered sentinels. Not only do they counter the waves, but also the stones, the chunks and sometimes even the tons-heavy broken-off slabs that are pounded upon them time and again by a raging tempest. And that the waves not only deliver, but also take away shows the mystery of the missing throne rock. For years one of the most outstanding coast contours from the meadow. I sat upon it countless times, waves licking towards my feet, a familiar friend of at least five tons: after the November storm it vanished without a trace.
However much energy the waves carry, what washes in, also washes back again. And far from always the waves come in at right angles and retreat similarly. There is the swell from the Atlantic Ocean and also the wind that determine the angle under which a wave breaks on the edge of a terrace. The smaller the incline under which the wave hits the edge, the more articulate it washes by. Such a 'shooting wave' throws up water in its line.
But along the waterside the shelves are not level, but in a long, slanted pile, roughly 50 metres from head to head. The thrown-up water first flows down along the inner edge of the terrace and where the sea washes over, it returns. Often then it is vehemently saluted by unrestrained approach and jubilantly reaches for the sky. Very rewarding to photograph, especially when illuminated by the setting sun.
Whether they are rumouring at Cape Cowskull or whispering between the stone ground rockpools and the sea urchin corrosion, the waves always have something to discuss. Of course they most prefer to lie down, but if only one of them does not participate the rest will also come to rise.
I only hear them when I hear them not. It is like breathing, you only notice it when there is no air. The waves are like the arms of gravity. They carry me when I swim, but also when I dream they form a hammock of trusted sound.